At an Oct. 13 public hearing, High Street's owner told the Dunwoody City Council that its first-phase retail has not worked out the way it planned. It then asked to rebuild the middle of the campus to fix that. The developer's own diagnosis is that the place faces inward, and that one point explains most of what a Perimeter Center neighbor sees, and misses, when driving past.
The fix GID Development Group has proposed swaps a planned apartment building for a central greenspace, three flagship retailers and a way for people on foot to get into the heart of the site. Before deciding whether that matters to you, it helps to know what is already behind those walls and why so few people seem to know about it.
What GID Told the Council
Rough Draft Atlanta reported that Carson Land, GID's vice president of mixed-use development, spoke plainly at the hearing.
"You see phase one existing as this dynamic downtown environment, but it's inward-facing. Our retail vision for phase one hasn't come to fruition as we'd planned."
Mayor Lynn Deutsch described the same problem from outside. "I think people don't necessarily know what they're seeing at High Street; they don't know what's there," she said, according to the same Rough Draft report. "They see two big walls."
Land agreed with the mayor's "wall" description. The developer and the mayor are describing the same thing. Phase one is a working courtyard with its doors turned the wrong way, and that is a different thing from a project that has stalled.
The site has taken a long time to get here. Council Member Stacey Harris noted that DeKalb County approved the zoning for the 36-acre property in 2007, a year before Dunwoody incorporated. She called High Street "the parting gift to the City of Dunwoody" and credited GID with holding the land through the recession and COVID.
Inside the Walls, More Than Most Drivers See
Phase one was completed in 2024. It includes 150,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, 600 apartments, 90,000 square feet of new loft office space and 222,000 square feet of existing office space, all connected by a 0.75-acre park called The Green. The first apartment residents moved in during late January 2024, Rough Draft reported at the time.
Retail leasing moved fast at first. By Sept. 30, 2024, Urbanize Atlanta counted about 86,000 square feet of retail leased, which is more than half of phase one's space. Two years later, Land put the count at 23 commercial businesses, 13 of them retail tenants. By the developer's own account, filling the space has not been enough to make it visible from Perimeter Center Parkway.
Here is the open roster, based on the tenant list in High Street's November 2025 holiday announcement plus this year's two openings:
- Restaurants and sweets: Agave Bandido, Ben & Jerry's, Cuddlefish, The Hampton Social, Nando's Peri-Peri, Velvet Taco, Varuni Napoli and Rosetta Bakery
- Retail: Allen Edmonds
- Entertainment: Puttshack, which held its grand-opening celebration in November 2024
- Services: SkinSpirit, Sugarcoat and The NOW Massage
Nearly everything on that list is food, drink or an appointment. Only one is a traditional store. That fits Land's comment that the retail vision fell short. It also explains the three "flagship retailers" in the new proposal. They would add a kind of tenant phase one mostly lacks, in the one spot a passerby can't miss.
This Year's Openings Serve the People Already Inside
Both 2026 openings are places you visit on foot, not places you drive to.
In July, Rough Draft reported that Varuni Napoli planned to open its third location at High Street on Aug. 5. Rosetta Bakery followed with a grand-opening event on Saturday, Sept. 12, and made Rough Draft's roundup of September restaurant openings. High Street's Rosetta page lists the bakery as now open. By mid-October, Land was describing both as recent openings.
Land called the pair "a really great offering that we think provides a great amenity for the office and residents on property [and] the community at large." He listed the on-site audience first, and that audience is growing. Rough Draft reported in September that TriNet is expected to occupy about 150,000 square feet at High Street and bring hundreds of jobs to Dunwoody over five years. Discover Dunwoody, the city's tourism bureau, has signed an office lease there and expects to finish moving by the end of 2026.
Land called TriNet's choice "a really great validation of the idea of High Street." A weekday lunch crowd from the offices and an evening crowd from the 600 apartments can keep a bakery and a pizzeria busy without anyone from outside the walls. The harder job, and the one Block 6 is meant to do, is pulling in neighbors who live a mile away and have never parked there.
The Green Is the Front Door for Now
Until any redesign is built, The Green is how High Street greets visitors, and its fall calendar is set up for neighbors who want a reason to come in.
The biggest date on it is Haunting at High Street, Saturday, Oct. 31, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on The Green. High Street's event page lists live music, face painting, roaming entertainment, a trick-or-treat scavenger hunt and a costume contest. Discover Dunwoody's Halloween guide includes it among the city's Halloween events.
Outside of holidays, High Street's events calendar has run regular programming on The Green this fall, including Wellness Wednesdays, Social Fridays, games and Sunday gatherings. No 2026 holiday program has been posted yet. Last year's ice rink, pop-up bar and Santa photos were part of the 2025 season, so treat the calendar as the only reliable word on whether they come back.
Block 6 Is Where the Door Gets Cut
The proposal applies only to Block 6, the center of the planned 10-block campus along Perimeter Center West. GID wants to replace a planned residential building with a parking podium. Retail and a central greenspace would sit on top, along with an internal street and sidewalk network that includes on-street parking. Land said the change would "open up the heart of High Street" with three flagship retailers and the pedestrian connections he thinks the development has lacked. The retailers have not been named.
The 2007 limits stay the same. The full three-phase buildout is capped at 1,500 condominiums, 1,500 apartments, 400,000 square feet of retail, 635,000 square feet of office and two hotels. GID is asking to change its 2018 site plan, not those caps. Measured against those caps, phase one built 600 of a possible 1,500 apartments and 150,000 of a possible 400,000 square feet of retail. Most of High Street hasn't been built yet, and Block 6 decides what the middle of it looks like.
City staff recommended two new conditions on top of the 27 already in the zoning: on-street parking must be parallel only, and the streetscape along Perimeter Center Parkway must be completed. Land said GID accepts both. Before the amendment came back for a vote, council members asked the developer for three more things:
- A traffic and parking plan for restaurant deliveries and pickups
- More clarity about on-street parking
- More buildout of the site's multi-use trail network
The third request ties into a larger project. Staff in Dunwoody and Sandy Springs are working on a paved trail connection to PATH400 along Hammond Drive and Peachtree Dunwoody Road. If that link is built, High Street would face outward toward walkers and cyclists as well as drivers. That matters because the property sits right on the Dunwoody-Sandy Springs border, a split covered in our look at Sandy Springs' two housing markets. The trail network has been expanding on the Buckhead end too, as our summer Buckhead piece on PATH400 described.
The council's vote was scheduled for Monday, Oct. 26, after the first public hearing on Oct. 13. Rough Draft described the council's first response as positive, and Deutsch said she hoped the change "happens relatively quickly." Even if the council approves it, Block 6 would still have to be designed and built, so the High Street you can visit this weekend is the phase one described above. Haunting at High Street starts on The Green at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 31.
For more on how the rest of the city is changing, our Dunwoody neighborhood page and our resident's map of Dunwoody Village cover the city's other center.
If you own a home or condo near Perimeter Center, the High Street story is part of your property's story. That includes the trail link, the new office jobs and a redesigned center block. Bobbie Schmitt can show you how to tell it to buyers. Request a Custom Marketing Plan.
